PulseAudio is the audio output for Ubuntu. If you use something else, you are on your own. Indeed, distorsion is one of several reason to avoid ALSA (except through PulseAudio, that is). And even with ALSA, 100% is in fact an arbitrary level at least for floating point output (which is most frequent in VLC). VLC cannot know what the ALSA plugins do, and many ALSA users set soft mixing up.
Anyway, there *is* an option to limit the volume slider to 100% in VLC 2.1 already. ** Changed in: vlc (Ubuntu) Status: New => Fix Released -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1255553 Title: A keyboard shortcut or a toolbar shortcut for setting volume to 100% is missing To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vlc/+bug/1255553/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs